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SEOUL, South Korea — A day after exchanging artillery fire across their disputed sea border,
North and South Korea hurled insults at each other yesterday, with the North rejecting an ambitious
overture from the South’s president, Park Geun-hye.

In a speech in Dresden, Germany, that was broadcast live in South Korea on Friday, Park promised
a huge investment in North Korea’s decrepit industries, as well as humanitarian aid for babies and
nursing mothers, if the North gives up its nuclear-weapons program.

Although Park’s proposal largely reiterated what her three predecessors have proposed, it marked
her most detailed overture toward the North since she came to office shortly after the North’s
nuclear test in February 2013.

Yesterday, the state-controlled North Korean newspaper
Rodong Sinmun scoffed at Park’s speech, calling the unmarried South Korean leader an “
eccentric old spinster” and “a frog in a well.” It said her overture was “full of deception” and “
filth” and was aimed at destroying the North Korean government.

South Korea immediately responded, condemning North Korea for using “expressions even street
ruffians would refrain from.”

“North Korea must realize that by the way it is behaving, it will attain nothing and will only
deepen its isolation,” the government in Seoul said in a statement.

The tensions continued yesterday, with the South Korean military saying it was investigating an
unidentified drone that crash-landed on Baengnyeong Island, in South Korean waters near where the
exchange of artillery shells and rockets occurred.